Video conference calls have developed from a novelty used rarely to grow into a commonly used business communication tool. Businesses often prefer the more personal communication available through video conferences compared with telephone conferences, and also enjoy savings in travel costs while still having a personal presence among the participants that is not possible with audio only communications. Further, video conferencing allows individuals at a number of disparate locations to share data, such as presentations and spreadsheets, while conducting a conference, thereby reducing the complexity of distributing written material before the conference occurs.
These advantages of video conferencing has resulted in a number of businesses installing video conferencing equipment for use by employees to communicate with other business locations across the business' network. Additionally, businesses commonly communicate outside of their network, such as with video equipment located in a customer's network, by establishing video calls through the public network.
The advantages and convenience of video calls are often offset by the difficulty of configuring and scheduling video calls in light of the limited video conferencing equipment available, the technical knowledge generally required to configure video calls, and demands on network bandwidths. For instance, a multi-point video conference call between three or more video end points typically requires the use of a multi-call unit (MCU) to coordinate the exchange of video data between the video end points. Thus, before establishing a multi-point video conference, the end point and MCU are configured to support the video conference. As another example, video end points sometime use different protocols so that a video conference between such end points typically requires a configuration with a gateway that insures a consistent communications pathway. In addition, for video conference calls that involve a large number of participants at distributed locations, the bandwidth generally used to support the multiple end points tends to exceed the capacity of individual MCU's and gateways so that multiple MCU's and gateways are needed to configure the video call.
To coordinate video conference equipment use, businesses typically dedicate staff that accepts requests for use of end points, schedules the video network devices to support the video call and coordinates and configures the video call. Maintaining staff for this purpose increases the expense of video conferencing and reduces its convenience. Further, for businesses with expensive video conferencing resources the task of coordinating use of those resources is complex and labor intensive. The complexity and labor associated with video conferencing grows as the number of participants outside the business' network increases.
A significant problem that businesses encounter with video conferencing is the under utilization and non-optimized use of video conferencing equipment. For instance, conference calls can be difficult to configure, especially complex calls that are configured with MCU's that are set up to accomplish the call. The use of a variety of different devices leads to scheduling difficulties for the resources that are available. In some instances, staff is simply overwhelmed and unable to keep up with video conferencing requests in a timely manner. This can lead to under utilization of the video conferencing equipment or an increase in staff size and corresponding increase in labor expense. Further, as the complexity of configuring and scheduling video conferences increases, business members are less likely to use video conferencing equipment because the time and hassle in arranging a video conference is not worthwhile. In addition, complexity leads to unreliability so that business members will avoid video conferences to reduce potential embarrassment when the conferences fail.
With the growing use of video calls and increased availability of bandwidth, the use of non-video communication devices during video calls has become increasingly common. For example, if a video device is not available at a desired time, some or all participants may have to use audio devices that require separate scheduling and arrangements, such as a telephone conference service provider. As another example, in order to exchange presentations and data video conferences often rely on application sharing services, such as through the WEBEX service, streaming feeds or other multimedia communication devices that also use separate scheduling and arrangements. Video network administrators face a substantial challenge in allocating and scheduling these additional resources, configuring a conference to include the desired resources and ensuring that the conference occurs as planned. The challenge grows if access to some resources is restricted, such as by requiring positive identification of participants limiting expensive resources to conferences that involve executives, requiring supervisor approval for conferences that cost over a defined amount or other business policies.